Latest / Uptime Podcast – Weather Guard Lightning Tech / Siemens Gamesa Builds Hornsea Blades, NEMS Invests in Perth

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Siemens Gamesa Builds Hornsea Blades, NEMS Invests in Perth · Uptime Podcast – Weather Guard Lightning Tech

• 0:00
  Happy Monday, everyone.
• 0:01
  Well, let's talk about the biggest wind farm on earth.
• 0:05
  It doesn't exist yet, but its blades are being built r-right now.
• 0:09
  Over in Hull, England, Siemens Gamesa just started making blades for
• 0:13
  Ørsted's Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm.
• 0:17
  That's two point nine gigawatts, one hundred and ninety-seven turbines.
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  Each blade is longer than a football pitch.
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  Fourteen hundred workers, uh, build blades in that factory turning the
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  raw materials into finished product.
• 0:32
  When complete, Hornsea 3 will power more than three million British homes.
• 0:36
  It's the single largest offshore wind farm in the world.
• 0:40
  And if we slide over to Germany for a moment, the German cabinet
• 0:44
  just approved an amendment to the Offshore Wind Act, theWindSeeG.
• 0:49
  It's headed to the Bundestag next.
• 0:52
  The goal?
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  New rules by January first, twenty twenty-seven.
• 0:57
  But the Offshore Wind Energy Foundation says the draft does not go far enough.
• 1:03
  Sixteen gigawatts of awarded projects are still waiting on
• 1:07
  final investment decisions.
• 1:09
  Sixteen.
• 1:10
  Uh, that's quite a few.
• 1:12
  The foundations want a new way, -- for developers to hand back sites
• 1:16
  they can't build so that the sites can be re-tendered quickly under
• 1:20
  conditions that actually work.
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  Sort of a use it or lose it.
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  That's the idea.
• 1:26
  Uh, w-we'll head a little further east to India.
• 1:29
  India ranks fourth in the world for installed wind power,
• 1:33
  but probably not for long.
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  A government official said this week that India will overtake Germany
• 1:40
  and become the world's third-largest wind energy nation by twenty thirty.
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  One hundred seven gigawatts of installed capacity.
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  India added a, a record six gigawatts last year alone, and that
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  shattered their previous record of a little over four gigawatts.
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  And twenty-eight more gigawatts are under construction right now.
• 2:01
  Impressive., Let's head down to Western Australia because a company called
• 2:07
  National Electric Motor Services, NEMS for short, is building a one million
• 2:12
  dollar facility in Perth test and repair wind turbine generators 'cause, right
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  now Australian windfarm operators, , ship their broken generators overseas
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  for repairs, and that takes months.
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  NEMS is the only authorized service center for Allen Motoren
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  in all of Western Australia.
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  Uh, this is the fifth project funded through Australia's Wind Energy
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  Manufacturing Co-investment program.
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  Local repair, faster turnaround and homegrown capability.
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  That's all good.
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  And staying in Australia, Perth based Nexus Technology just bought a
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  British robotics company, BladeBug.
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  Now, BladeBug is a robot that uses suction cups to crawl across wind turbine blades.
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  Nexus already has a robot called Magneto that uses electromagnetic
• 3:03
  adhesion to climb steel structures.
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  Uh, if you put the two together, you can inspect almost any surface
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  on a turban or about anything else.
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  Add AI and machine vision, and you have robots that can see what human
• 3:17
  eyes might miss from places human hands should not have to reach.
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  It's safer, faster, and it's gonna be a lot smarter.
• 3:27
  Now one, one more story before we finish today.
• 3:28
  Siemens Gamesa has now installed more than 300 recyclable blades in six countries.
• 3:36
  The secret, it's a new resin.
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  And unlike conventional resins, this one lets you separate the blade
• 3:42
  components at end of life so you can separate the fabric from the resin.
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  Cool stuff Jonas Pagh Jensen, head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa says the
• 3:52
  technology is ready for full scale use.
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  That sounds great.
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  And Siemens Gamesa has already installed 36 Greentower units, steel towers
• 4:01
  with 63% lower carbon emissions.
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  So although sustainability may have faded from the headlines,
• 4:08
  it's still in tender documents, and it's showing up more than ever.
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  In Denmark, The Netherlands, and in France, all of them are asking about
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  recyclability and decarbonization before they are awarding contracts.
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  So what should you be watching this week?
• 4:27
  Well, recyclability is no longer a nice to have.
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  It is a must-have, and it is showing up in tender scoring, and if your blades
• 4:35
  cannot be recycled at end of life, you may not win the contract to begin with.
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  And a lot of supply chains are going local.
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  Australia does not want to ship generators overseas anymore.
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  India is building its own turbine factories, and the countries buying
• 4:52
  wind power want it built at home.
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  , For professionals in the wind industry, the competitive edge is shifting.
• 4:59
  It's not just who can build the best turbine, it is who can build it locally,
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  recycle it fully, and inspect it without putting a person in a harness.
• 5:10
  Very interesting times.
• 5:12
  And that's the state of the wind industry for the seventh of September, 2026.
• 5:18
  Please join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow